The present invention relates to systems for dispensing beverages from bottles, and more particularly to systems for dispensing measured amounts of liquid from a bottle and accounting for the quantity and cost of the liquid so dispensed.
A bartender commonly pours liquor from a bottle into a glass in which a drink is being mixed. A spout is often attached to the mouth of the bottle to dispense the liquor at a relatively constant flow rate so that a bartender can "free pour" the liquor without the need for a measuring device, such as a jigger. Even at a constant flow rate, the exact amount of liquor poured into each drink varies depending upon the bartender, and varies from drink to drink poured by the same bartender. Such variation affects the profits derived from a given bottle of liquor. In addition, simple bottle spouts do not provide any mechanism to ensure that each drink dispensed from a bottle was rung up on the cash register. Thus, a bartender has been able to serve free or generous drinks to friends and preferred customers without accounting to the tavern management.
In response to these problems, more sophisticated liquor dispensing equipment has been devised. One such system is described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,920,149 and provides each bottle with a spout that has a magnetically operated valve. When liquor was to be poured from a given bottle, its spout was placed inside an actuator ring that is connected to a computer via a cable. When the bottle and the ring were inverted, a switch closed causing an electromagnetic coil in the ring to be energized which opened the valve in the spout. The valve was held open for a defined period of time which dispensed a given volume of liquor because of a relatively constant flow rate through the spout. When that time period ends, the electromagnetic coil was deenergized by the computer and the valve closed.
Three rings were provided on the outside of the spout and by selecting either metal or plastic for each ring and the price of a drink could be encoded which was read electromagnetically by the actuator ring. However, the size of the spout accommodated only three rings which did not provide enough codes to uniquely identify each spout in the bar. As a consequence, the specific spout (or liquor bottle) could not be identified; rather, only an identification of the price class for the liquor. Thus, this previous system could not determine how many drinks were dispensed from each bottle and keep track of the liquor inventory at the bar.